


Where A Rainbow Is Used As A Signal And Somehow Dirk Sees It For What It Is (He's Pretty Sure, Anyway)

by cosmicocean



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Pre-Slash, and i didn't even come up with that, more pre-slashy than the last pre-slash one, that's canon y'all, todd is impressively bad at flirting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-16 23:03:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13064028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicocean/pseuds/cosmicocean
Summary: He’d been sitting there, giving Dirk shit, calm and comfortable and enjoying himself, and thinking about how he wanted to do this a lot, and how he wanted to do this but also maybe other, romantical sort of things, and it had seemed like a signal, or a sign, or just something to alert Dirk, maybe? Something… flirtier, he guesses, except he’s terrible at that, so. It was a terrible idea. Terrible plan. Terrible and embarrassing and just plain old dumb.Where Todd is awful at flirting, Dirk somehow manages to read him relatively well, and the rainbow stripes on Dirk's jacket are velcro.





	Where A Rainbow Is Used As A Signal And Somehow Dirk Sees It For What It Is (He's Pretty Sure, Anyway)

“I like the stripes.”

Dirk looks up from his desk. He’s spent the past couple days reorganizing things on it. As far as Todd can tell, he’s trying to understand how to have one. It seems to involve a lot of paper shuffling and strategic relocation of the Magic 8 Ball he’s picked up from somewhere that he’s using as a paperweight. “Pardon?”

“The-“ Todd gestures vaguely. “The stripes. On the new jacket.”

“Oh!” Dirk looks down at the arm of the jacket slung over the back of his chair and then back at Todd. “Thank you, Todd! I’m rather pleased with it.” He beams at him and Todd feels that funny feeling in his stomach he gets sometimes when he does that. Most times.

“Yeah, well, it’s, uh. It’s good. I like it.”

Dirk pats the sleeve fondly. “It’s velcro strips! You know, in case I get bored and want to rearrange them. I do it quite often, actually.”

“It’s very good… colors. Very nice color stuff.”

It sounds pitiful even to his own ears. Dirk doesn’t seem to notice, just continuing that beaming thing that makes Todd feel stupidly fluttery. “Thank you, Todd.”

“Yep.” Todd returns determinedly to studying the file he’d stolen from the guy whose house they’d broken into so he doesn’t have to look at Dirk’s smiling face, which is also a negative, to be perfectly honest, but it’s more productive this way.

 

“Todd.”

Todd plays WILDCAT on Words With Friends and sends Amanda a quick “your move, sis”. “Yes?”

“Todd, this is so _boring._ ”

Todd grins as he quickly catches a few fish on Animal Crossing while waiting for Amanda to play. “Weren’t you the one who was so excited to do this? Don’t stakeouts make us _real_ detectives, or whatever you were pontificating about?”

“Yes, I thought it did, maybe it still does, but _Todd._ We’re just _sitting_ here. Watching this guy’s apartment. And you’re playing on your _phone._ ”

“I can put my phone away, if you want. What would you _want_ the two of us to be doing?”

Dirk goes a little pink for reasons Todd doesn’t entirely understand, coughs a little, and looks out his window. “I don’t know. Things. Other things. That isn’t this.”

Todd puts the phone in his pocket, ignoring the buzz that’s probably Amanda getting a better word than him. He’s better at Boggle, she’s better at Words With Friends. He leans back against his seat and looks up at the ceiling.

“You could be playing on your phone too, you know.”

“Shouldn’t _one_ of us be paying attention?”

Todd grins. “Aren’t I normally the one who does that?”

“Yes, well, I suppose I’ve got to step up to the bowl.”

“Did you mean plate?”

“…no?”

Todd just grins wider. He has to admit, he loves this part of working with Dirk, the back and forth, the possessor of the upper hand depending on the day. It might have less to do with working with him and more to do with just… being around him. Which is something, along with the weird stomachy feeling, that he intends to do something about, just… not til he’s had a little more time to think about it.

They’re both quiet for a minute or so, and Todd’s got to admit, without the distraction of his phone, it is _painfully_ boring. He looks over at Dirk, who’s staring out the windshield a little absently.

“You’re staring at me.” Dirk gives him the eyebrow that he gets whenever he thinks he’s about to be right. “Are you bored now, too?”

Todd shakes his head. “Nope. Just thinking about things.”

“Oh, are you now?”

“Yep.”

“What things, exactly?”

Fuck. Should’ve seen that coming. “…oh, you know. The things you were thinking about that you wanted us to do, I guess?”

Dirk’s color deepens a little and he goes back to looking out the opposite window. “Highly unlikely.”

“Suit yourself.”

About halfway into minute one of staring at the ceiling, it occurs to Todd the sort of things that Dirk might have been thinking about and he feels himself flush a little, wondering how being aware that the general feelings that have been swimming around inside him for a little while are almost definitely reciprocated doesn’t somehow make looking them in the eye and actually communicating with them any easier.

Around minute three or four of staring at the ceiling, Todd’s processed the realization of the… thinky stuff and is back to being bored. He looks over to Dirk again, who’s back to gazing off in a far away manner. His eyes get pulled to the brightly colored stripes on Dirk’s jacket, and he looks at those for another few seconds before he gets an idea.

Todd peels one of the stripes off. Dirk jumps a little at the noise, but doesn’t react other than that. Todd pulls another couple off, and starts rearranging him.

“Todd.”

“Yeah?”

“Are you rearranging my stripes?”

“…no.”

“Are you positive?”

“Fairly, yeah.”

“Because I can hear the noise.”

“Makes sense that you’d start hearing things eventually.”

Dirk’ s nose twitches endearingly, but he keeps staring out the windshield, saying nothing. Todd keeps playing with the stripes, wondering how long this can go on for before Dirk snaps.

As it turns out, the answer’s about a minute and a half before Dirk finally looks at him and goes “ _ALL RIGHT, FOR FUCK’S SAKE, NOW, TODD._ ”

Todd only just manages to suppress a laugh, feeling his chest barely quake. “I’m not doing anything.”

“ _You’re holding one of the stripes in your hand._ ”

Todd looks down at the orange strip in his hand, then back at Dirk, whose entire face seems to be screaming _are you shitting me right now, Todd_. He tries to hoist the most innocuous look possible onto his face, raising his eyebrows and deliberately twirling the stripe between his fingers. “You must have me confused with someone else.”

“How could I _possibly_ -“

“Me? Holding one of your stripes? _Noooo_.”

“Todd, it’s _right there_ in between your-“

“Such lunacy.”

Dirk’s eyebrows do a funny thing. Todd can’t keep the laughter restricted to his chest and feels his shoulders shake. Dirk stares at the strip in his hand, then at Todd’s face, and pouts. They continue gazing at each other for a moment before Todd calmly rearranges the stripes for the last time before he holds up his hands in an “all right, that’s it” way, smiling a little.

“Your punishment is that you have to play either Heads Up or Fruit Ninja with me.”

“Fruit Ninja. Easily.”

“You _never_ want to play Heads Up with me.”

“Because you are the _worst_ at describing things.”

Dirk is clearly struggling to keep the grin off his face. “Perhaps it is _you_ is the worst at understanding what someone means when they describe things to you.”

Todd purses his lips to try and push the smile off his face. “I’m pretty sure that’s not it.”

“Well, _I’m_ pretty sure it is, and I’m pretty sure you’re not loading the game up like you’re supposed to.”

“Why does it have to be my phone?”

“Because you were playing with my jacket. Your battery pays the price.”

Todd shakes his head and grins, pulling his phone out and trying not to glance too much at Dirk’s shoulder patches, which he’s arranged in the pattern of a rainbow.

He gets a couple notifications from Words With Friends. Amanda’s played INDEPENDENT and has sent the message “today is the day i celebrate my independence fucko”. Damn.

 

The night ends up involving a couple chases, one scimitar, and three hurled apples, but they come out of it only a little bruised and exhausted, so they both resolve to spend the rest of the next day trying to catch up on a little sleep. Todd, however, finds this a little difficult at first, because he keeps thinking about the jacket.

He’d put the rainbow pattern on there as a whim, sort of. He’d been sitting there, giving Dirk shit, calm and comfortable and enjoying himself, and thinking about how he wanted to do this a lot, and how he wanted to do this but also maybe other, romantical sort of things, and it had seemed like a signal, or a sign, or just something to alert Dirk, maybe? Something… flirtier, he guesses, except he’s terrible at that, so. It was a terrible idea. Terrible plan. Terrible and embarrassing and just plain old _dumb_. It’s either too subtle or too the _opposite_ of subtle, which is even more embarrassing.

Eventually Todd calms himself down by saying that Dirk’s probably not going to get what it means anyway. It’s probably the too subtle one, and he’ll go back to fidgeting with it, and it’ll all be done with, and he won’t have to worry about it anymore. After that, he finally gets to sleep.

 

The next couple days involve even more running around and three more scimitars, as well as an AK-47, so Todd completely forgets about the rainbow for another week, until Farah is hovering over Dirk’s shoulder while he tries to do paperwork.

“You know, I’m fairly certain I specifically said that this would be Todd’s job when we bought the offices.”

“Todd can’t do _all_ of the paperwork, Dirk.”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Because then Todd will kill you.” Todd takes a sip of his coffee as he reads over the newspaper on his phone, mostly to see what they’re saying the giant explosion had been caused by (hopefully not them, which is the truth, but would be very inconvenient to see in print). “And then we’re going to have rename it Farah Black’s Fuck Your Bullshit Agency.” Todd’s not under any illusions as to who the agency goes to if Dirk’s not around.

“It’s not a good sign that you’re speaking about yourself in the third person, Todd.”

“Your rainbow’s new.”

Todd snaps his head up at Farah’s observation, staring at Dirk’s jacket, which he’s got slung around his shoulders like a blanket. Sure enough, the rainbow pattern is still there.

“Hm?”

“On your jacket. Don’t you normally switch it up into some nonsensical pattern of your own devising?”

“Oh, that.” Dirk smiles pleasantly up at her. “That’s Todd’s rainbow.”

Todd doesn’t choke on his coffee, per se, but he comes pretty close. He snaps his eyes to his phone, cheeks burning. He can feel Farah’s gaze on him and he stubbornly ignores it.

“Ah,” Farah says slowly. “Yes. I see.”

Todd continues to say nothing, not really seeing his phone in front of him.

“Why, don’t you think it looks nice?”

“Very nice. That’s the wrong box you’ve filled out.”

“Oh, _shit._ They all look the same.”

“This one states that one of us got dismembered.”

“Can’t we _say_ that one of us did?”

“No,” Todd manages. “I’m not taking off my limbs if anyone comes asking.”

“Party pooper.”

 

Okay, so, Dirk’s kept the rainbow. Maybe he just likes it. He likes bright colors. It makes sense that he’d like a rainbow. Doesn’t mean anything. Doesn’t mean a damn thing at all.

 

All right, well, maybe it _does_ mean something. Feelings type somethings.

Todd takes a while to work through those, usually speaking. He hits on people readily enough, sure. He might not be necessarily _good_ at it, but it’s not a tremendously difficult thing for him to actually do. Actual feelings of substance beneath it can be… harder. It certainly could be a little tricky with Farah, with all that stuff from when they were on the road. It takes him a while to get up to actually dealing with and being okay with those feelings, mostly because once he _has_ , he jumps in all the way. Once he lets himself feel emotions, he goes in all the way.

Every time Todd sees the rainbow on Dirk’s jacket, however, glimpsing it out of the corner of his eye, or seeing it next to him during yet another stakeout, or just hanging out in the apartment with him, Dirk making him laugh over some tiny, dumb little joke, he thinks that this time, it’s easier. It’s easier to do this time around, easier to handle.

He thinks, once, when Dirk turns to him suddenly to make an awful pun, beaming like the sun, it might be because he’s already gone in all the way, and he’s only just realizing it now.

 

The Rowdy Three come into town a week or so later, dropping off a backpack full of buttons for Dirk, saying “you’re gonna need it” and refusing to tell him why. Amanda and Todd intend to go out for an actual lunch, but instead they end up splitting a package of brown sugar cinnamon Pop-Tarts on a park bench because the place they’d booked a reservation at gets burned down by the man who claims to be the arch nemesis of their current client. It doesn’t matter to Todd- the company is what’s important.

They wander back to the offices around the same time the Rowdy Three show to pick Amanda up. Martin’s lounging on their couch they picked out for waiting clients, smoking a cigarette and looking remarkably out of place. Vogel’s flicking at the edge of their sign while Gripps and Cross seem to be engaged in a complicated rock paper scissors game for no reason. Beast rushes by to collide with Dirk in a hug who gives a slightly awkward but fond pat on the back.

“Bibbit!”

“Hello, darling.”

“You kept!” She points at the orange traffic cone in the corner.

“Yes, I thought it went with the room.” He didn’t, and had made a lot of noise about it, but he hadn’t wanted to hurt Beast’s feelings, despite his bluster insisting otherwise. Todd could tell.

“New pesent for oo.” Beast happily holds up a fistful of crumpled bright yellow POLICE LINE: DO NOT CROSS tape.

“Ah. I’m… not entirely certain that I want to know where you got this, but it’s, it’s very nice, thank you, darling, I appreciate it.”

Beast beams and pats Dirk’s cheek fondly. Her gaze strays to his jacket and she gasps, patting at his sleeve. “ _Bibbit_. Rinbow.”

“Oh.” He looks down at the strips on his jacket, still arranged in the pattern Todd had set a while ago. “Yes, it is, isn’t it?”

She looks up at him with hopeful eyes. “Fo me?”

Dirk shuffles a little guiltily. “I’m afraid not, darling, that’s… someone else’s rainbow.”

Her brow furrows. Todd edges a little closer to Amanda (just in case), who looks a little amused.

“Come on, Beastie Girl,” Amanda says to Beast, who looks over at her. “We still gotta go find you those sunglasses with the purple lens you wanted.”

Beast pats Dirk’s cheek again and dodges to Amanda, linking their arms together. “Chikin.”

“And fried chicken, right.” Amanda looks over at Todd. “See you around, Todd. Tell Farah I said hi when she gets back from visiting Lydia.”

“Bye, Amanda. I will.”

The other Rowdies all nod as one at Dirk before they swan off together, leaving Dirk and Todd alone, leaning against Dirk’s desk, arms folded and looking off at the door.

“Er, to be clear.” Dirk sounds a little uncertain all of the sudden. “That. That wasn’t something you set up with Beast in mind, that wasn’t-“

This is an avenue of concern that hadn’t occurred to Todd. “…you actually think I made the rainbow on your arm because of the former forest lady we see like once a month at most?”

“Right, yes, of course, wouldn’t be that, very silly of me, I didn’t think it would be until she said anything and then I started to worry, but that’s good, that’s all very… good.”

They stand in silence for another moment.

“So, um.” The uncertainty sounds closer to nervousness now. “If the rainbow _was_ supposed to say something, if it wasn’t just some… coincidence of the universe, is there anything in particular it was supposed to say, perhaps, about you and me and their nature of our friendship? Relationship? Thing?”

Todd raises his eyebrows at him, hoping they’ll have all the answers to that, mostly so he doesn’t have to vocalize them. Dirk seems to get the picture, blushes, and stares at the ground.

“Yes, right, yes, yep, cool, very neat.”

Todd fights a smile and looks at the ground, too. His stomach’s doing that thing it does whenever Dirk smiles at him, but he doesn’t want to look away this time in the name of “productivity” or whatever. He wants to actually face this. He opens his mouth but Dirk speaks first.

“Perhaps a little less than hypothetically speaking, would you be interested in going out for a drink some time? In a way different than the normal celebratory post case fashion or the… hanging out as friends fashion?”

Todd lets himself grin down at the floor for another half second before he gives in and grins over at Dirk, who looks pleasantly surprised. “A little less than hypothetically speaking, I think I would.”

Dirk does that thing he did out in the woods during the Patrick Spring case, where he tries to shove the delighted look off his face in favor of playing it cool. “That’s, that’s, that’s quite good. Quite excellent. Sounds like a nice time.”

“Yeah, it does.”

Dirk stops trying to look cool and just looks jubilant. Todd looks over at the sign for the agency, chest warm. Then blinks.

“I think Vogel chipped a bit off the edge of our plaque.”

Dirk’s eyes widen, elation vanishing. “Oh, _no._ ” He rushes to the sign and starts inspecting it. “He _did_ , that _shit_ , does he have _any_ idea how long I’ve wanted this, Todd, text your sister, tell her that we’re billing those hooligans for this.”

“We can just get a little paint for it, no one will notice.”

“Hmph.” Dirk glances over his shoulder before he goes back to studying the chip. “Text Amanda that we’re billing them anyway.”

Todd thinks that at best they’re going to laugh at such a text. But he’s still feeling all kinds of soft and it’s probably clouding his better judgment.

“Yeah, okay,” he agrees. “Come on. We’ve got nothing to do right now. Let’s go get some paint.”

**Author's Note:**

> So Klaudia and I started talking about this I think after the finale, and I started it yesterdayish and finally got it done now.
> 
> I'm gonna take this note to say that I've heard the news about the cancellation, and I hope that we all get a season three by the grace of Netflix, but even if we don't, I'm sure as hell gonna keep telling stories in this fandom, and I've loved being on this ride with y'all. I have made so many friends thanks to this show, and I am so grateful to the show for that. I love all of y'all, and I look forwards to making more content with you!
> 
> Anyway, my favorite parts of this are probably Beast's gift to Dirk because the idea of her offering him police tape and the look on Dirk's face is hilarious to me, and the stakeout, because I like writing them flirting really poorly by fucking with each other.
> 
> I couldn't think of anything to do with Mona in this fic, so just picture she's hanging out there as a squeezy toy. I would die for her, though, so expect me to do more with her character in the future!


End file.
